Karen Lawson, Ph.D.
I was born in San Francisco, the eldest of four, a Catholic military brat who loved reading in her tree house. From age twelve to twenty I lived in Japan. My first three years of college were at a German Jesuit University in Tokyo, Joichi DaiGaku, studying essence and existence. I returned to the states in the sixties to have my mind turned inside out at the University of California at Berkeley, where I eventually earned a doctorate soaked in tear gas. The Catholic and the military melted off, but the tree house stayed.
After earnest attempts to smash the state, the nuclear family, sexism, racism, homophobia, private property and the war machine, I came with my land group to the mountains of Southern Humboldt in the late sixties. I was already in graduate school by then, with a baby on my back, so I soon fell back to the city and embarked on a career as a psychotherapist. During that period I studied the enneagram, Gurdjeiff, and assorted Eastern religions for three years with Claudio Naranjo. My mind was now a triple helix which led naturally to spending 28 years in the Sufi Order of the West, led by Pir Vilayat Khan. That energy was transferred into Vajrayana Buddhism when I moved to Humboldt. Today Fogdrip is my religion and my politics, and I’m still pursuing a lifelong dream of getting the philosophical kaleidoscope to hold still for a minute.
The day after my youngest of three daughters had her last high school graduation party, I was in the car, back on my interrupted path to Elk Ridge above Briceland in Southern Humboldt. I retrieved the battery to my heart from Teakettle Rock where I had buried it, and moved into the “cold water and candles” cabin I would have lived in back in 1968 if I had stayed. Within the year, my dear lawyer husband Herb decided I was serious about this, and followed me here to teach Junior High at Whale Gulch and jump into environmental advocacy. We found a lovely house on 45 acres next door to my original land and have been living happily ever after, off the grid and mostly out of the box. Always digging ourselves deeper into the community mulch, always breathing deeper with the trees. We hope to die here, encircled by these trees and our misfitting-into-the-neighborhood radical nature friends, after raising just a little bit more ruckus.
Photos on this site are by neighbors Bill Eastwood and Jennifer Waters.
After earnest attempts to smash the state, the nuclear family, sexism, racism, homophobia, private property and the war machine, I came with my land group to the mountains of Southern Humboldt in the late sixties. I was already in graduate school by then, with a baby on my back, so I soon fell back to the city and embarked on a career as a psychotherapist. During that period I studied the enneagram, Gurdjeiff, and assorted Eastern religions for three years with Claudio Naranjo. My mind was now a triple helix which led naturally to spending 28 years in the Sufi Order of the West, led by Pir Vilayat Khan. That energy was transferred into Vajrayana Buddhism when I moved to Humboldt. Today Fogdrip is my religion and my politics, and I’m still pursuing a lifelong dream of getting the philosophical kaleidoscope to hold still for a minute.
The day after my youngest of three daughters had her last high school graduation party, I was in the car, back on my interrupted path to Elk Ridge above Briceland in Southern Humboldt. I retrieved the battery to my heart from Teakettle Rock where I had buried it, and moved into the “cold water and candles” cabin I would have lived in back in 1968 if I had stayed. Within the year, my dear lawyer husband Herb decided I was serious about this, and followed me here to teach Junior High at Whale Gulch and jump into environmental advocacy. We found a lovely house on 45 acres next door to my original land and have been living happily ever after, off the grid and mostly out of the box. Always digging ourselves deeper into the community mulch, always breathing deeper with the trees. We hope to die here, encircled by these trees and our misfitting-into-the-neighborhood radical nature friends, after raising just a little bit more ruckus.
Photos on this site are by neighbors Bill Eastwood and Jennifer Waters.